| d21lewis said: I agree with everyone who said N64 using cartridges. I honestly believe that Nintendo would have easily weathered the Playstation storm if it used CDs. Sony is give a little too much credit when it came to taking down Nintendo and Sega in the 5th gen. Basically, Sony won because they fucked up the least. Which PS1 games before the N64 set the world on fire? Jumping Flash? Destruction Derby? Twisted Metal? Good games but nothing that could really turn heads. The PS1's greatest games (Crash 1 was good and Gran Turismo was great, though) came at the hands of 3rd parties and many weren't even exclusive. Metal Gear, Castlevania, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, and more--these were the games that made people LOVE the Playstation brand and the only reason they were on Playstation (and many of them were on Saturn) was because they couldn't be done on the N64. Third parties could pput their games on N64 and pay Nintendo's high price for cartridges, use the small amount of space for textures and audio, and sell their games for $50-$80 or more OR they could use CDs, produce the games cheaply, have a ton of space (if a little less power) to utilize, and sell their titles for $39 or less. Saturn was dead due to Sega's poor relationship with the industry and gamers. Was there even a choice? The PS1 was king by default and the PS2 didn't have to do anything but sit back and not fuck up. Nintendo killed themselves, not by allowing the PS1 to come into existence, but by allowing it to have such an advantage when it came to software format. Coming to market a year after the competition, they should have known every advantage the PPS1 had and expanded on it. They went their own way and it blew up in their face. |
This.
It was well known that Square was pandering to Nintendo for a CD based console after their development team went too far and could no longer fit Final Fantasy VII on a cartridge (well, they could have except it would have been incredibly expensive). After rejecting Square's request, they not only jumped ship to the PlayStation, but also convinced felly 3rd party developers Namco and Capcom to do the same.
Square then went on to have the 2nd biggest selling title on the PSX, which would have been on the N64 had Nintendo played their cards right. Third parties would not have taken such big risks with the Playstation due to their inexperience in the market, and with Nintendo already wiping the floor with so many other consoles (particularly those released by electronics companies), a CD based Nintendo 64 would have had thord parties thinking "The playStation will just end up like the Panasonic 3DO, the NEC PCFX, the SNK Neo Geo, the Atari Jaguar or the Amiga CD32. The list of consoles that the SNES destroyed was incredible!
